beliefs are rendered into images" (p. 3) that mediates, among other
　　　　  things, "form and formlessness" (p. 281). The products of this
　　　　  medieval imaginaire--icons, myths, local deities, relics, and much
　　　　  more--are the very things that Zen ideology calls into question. The
　　　　  premise of this volume (and in various fashions of all Faure's work)
　　　　  is that this imaginaire was from the very beginning as present in
　　　　  Zen as were discourses on emptiness and enlightenment. Its presence
　　　　  in Keizan's universe, therefore, cannot be attributed solely to
　　　　  popularizing and esoteric syncretism. In his own way, Faure must
　　　　  once again struggle as mightily as any Mahayana thinker ever did
　　　　  with the "two truths"--although in a modern idiom of enormous
　　　　  erudition--in order to show us how a man whose religious ideology
　　　　  rejected all imagination could describe himself as having been a
　　　　  tree-deity "with the head of a dog, the body of a kite, and the
　　　　  belly and tail of a serpent" (p. 30).
　　　　  The genres of Keizan's imaginaire, furthermore, are not his, but
　　　　  extend backward and forward in time, so that his text seeks to
　　　　  homologize its expressions with what he perceives as eternal ones.
　　　　  In the end, Faure cannot recover Keizan except as an intersection of
　　　　  East Asian thoughts and images at a particular moment and place. He,
　　　　  too, must move forward and backward in time, from China to Japan and
　　　　  back, away from and toward Keizan. It is this last movement that
　　　　  impresses most and distinguishes this book from Faure's previous
　　　　  work. Here we have an intellectual biography that does not so much
　　　　  place an individual in history as find a history in an individual.
　　　　  Finally, Faure's use of Le Goff's terms suggests the possibility of
　　　　  mutually illuminating comparisons with parallel studies of medieval
　　　　  Europe. Faure, along with others such as Carl Bielefeldt and William
　　　　  Bodiford, has reconstructed the study of Zen as a religion to the
　　　　  point that scholars of religion generally should begin turning to
　　　　  this field to find what they would not expect: a rich tradition of
　　　　  icons, rituals, myths, and magical power. This volume is the best
　　　　  place for them to start.